Free The Ravens by Vidar Sundstøl Page A

help him, because there had to besomething really wrong for him to beat you up like that. It’s been bothering me more and more as time has passed, but after all these years, I feel like it’s too late to ask him. He would never tell me anything now. When I realized that you were one of the authors . . .”
    “So this is how you avoid the unpleasant task of talking to your own brother, is that it?” said Miller. “And by the way, weren’t you the one who stopped him?”
    Lance nodded.
    “Do you realize that he wanted to kill me?”
    “Do you really think so?”
    “What do you think he would have done with that baseball bat you took away from him?” Clayton Miller shuddered.
    “Well, um . . . ,” said Lance.
    “Actually,” said Miller, looking as if he were searching for the right words. “Actually, it doesn’t surprise me to hear that the two of you never talked about what happened.”
    “No?”
    “But if this is about your ‘cowardice as a brother,’ as you said, then I don’t see what good it will do to talk to me. Shouldn’t you be talking to Andy?”
    “You’re right. But tell me this, did the two of you know each other?”
    There was something about the way Miller had said his brother’s name that made Lance react.
    “Depends what you mean by ‘know each other.’ We hung out with the same bunch of kids for a while. But only during that one summer, I think.”
    “What bunch of kids?”
    Miller smiled.
    “Not your bunch of friends, at any rate,” he said.
    “No. I guess not.”
    “Andy was . . . I don’t know. He just showed up and started hanging out with us. You know how kids are at that age, testing boundaries, trying to find out where they belong. Right? We used to sit around in Lester Park in the evening, listening to music, smoking pot . . . things like that.”
    “Andy smoked pot?”
    Lance looked over his shoulder to see if anyone could hear them.
    “We all did,” replied Miller. “We were . . . what should I say? We were Duluth’s belated beatniks.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Forget it.” Clayton Miller laughed to himself. “By the way, it’s getting really cold out here.” He clapped his glove-clad hands and did a few clumsy hops, as if to underscore his point.
    “I know,” said Lance. “But could you just tell me what happened? It’s important. I’d like to know.”
    Miller looked as if he was starting to tire of the whole story.
    “He showed me something that he’d written.”
    Lance shook his head in disbelief. “Something he’d written?”
    “Yes.”
    “Okay. And?”
    “And I laughed at it.”
    “Was that all?”
    “That was enough,” said Miller.
    “But Andy would never have tried to kill somebody because they laughed at something he’d written. ”
    “Depends on what it was, don’t you think?” said Miller. “But you’ll have to ask him about that yourself. Right now I don’t have time for this anymore. I’ve got a long drive back to Minneapolis.”
    Miller turned on his heel and went inside. Lance followed.
    The poet immediately began packing up his books, putting them in a box. Feeling at a loss, Lance stood and watched until Chrissy came over to him.
    “Done?” she asked her uncle.
    Clayton Miller looked up from his books.
    “Your daughter?”
    “My niece,” Lance told him.
    “Oh, really? So she’s . . .”
    “Andy’s daughter.”
    For a moment Miller studied the teenager in the black clothes and makeup. Then he nodded appreciatively.

12
    THE WHITENESS was starting to fill up her mind, and she had begun to hear the terrible sound of silence in the middle of the lake. When she looked around, there was nothing to see, not even the shadow of her own body, only the endless white. There weren’t even any compass points anymore.
    Inga jolted upright in her chair, as if she’d been about to doze off. Was she dreaming? No, but she hadn’t been vigilant about keeping tabs on her thoughts; she had allowed them to wander where they